We received 66 outstanding entries for this. More than 40 entries are truly world-class with innovative visualizations, interactive graphs & kick-ass number crunching. It took me quite a while to organize all these entries, collect screenshots and review them.

So how do we make sense of all these?

Since doing justice all this variety and creativity in one post is difficult, I am splitting this in to 4 entries.

How do you like these dashboards?

I found quite a few of these really impressive. But I want to hear from you.

What entries you liked most? Go ahead and share your views.

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Really looking forward to seeing the detail behind these, all are good but some are frankly amazing, lots of potential inspiration here, especially for people like me who are good with tech aspects but useless at design!

Amazing entries. It is noticeable the increase in number of entries and the bubbling enthusiasm. I can see a clear use of lot of tips and tricks that you have discussed in various postings in the website. That shows that the followers of your website have taken you really seriously. Kudos to each of the participants, you and your team.

Continue the good work. I can’t wait for your customary analyses and the winning entries.

Really is quite amazing how the same data can be transformed into so many different dashboards. Plenty of things here that I can learn from, like getting the world map to change color based on user selections. Tried for a couple hours one day and just couldnt get it. Glad to see it’s at least possible.

Some really good ones here, although mine is clearly the best
It must have taken AGES to go through each one. I can see a lot of these have some very clever tricks going on, I can only imagine how long it took to unpick them all.

Well done to all participants and appreciate all the brains behind this amazing experiance, many of them have presented in a professsional manner and i am sure it will inspire many more people who want to be awesome in dashboards!

Once again congratuations to all and thanks to Chandoo for your wonderful effort!

WOW, really was a big time invested on this post, Chandoo. Amazing… I wish I could win. But I’m already happy to be chandoo’s pick!
The first place I would give for Lubos or Bryan. Second for Nathan. I think mine could be the 3th! >)

I’m learning a lot with the xlsm files. Thanks for the initiative Chandoo!

I never add comments to these things…….but here’s an exception – I am blown away by the work here – I do this for a living and believe myself to be very good at it however some of these examples are exceptional and I felt I had to congratulate those that put in the effort here.
well done.

The variety of analysis, range of layouts and use of different Excel skills is amazing.

I must say that I was both surprised and delighted that so many entries used World Maps to highlight/display data

Well Done to Everyone who entered !

Chandoo has asked me to assist in the Judging of the contest.

So to do this I set myself some criteria.

The dashboard had to:

1. Tell a story

2. Be clear and easy to follow through the logic of the presentation

3. Be able to be understood without a PHD

4. Be able to be presented

Then I thought about what I would want to see if looking for information on Salaries.

I would want to see

1. What my salary range by profession was in my country

2. Variance across the world

3. What is the variation in my profession

I was also looking for analysis that I hadn’t thought of but that were also useful.

Using the above sets of criteria I constructed a Hui’s Top 10 (although the astute will notice I picked 11) and gave each post a Gold Star.

For those who didn’t enter, these dashboards provide a huge library of various Excel techniques, which you can pull apart and examine how they work so you can use the same techniques in your own dashboards.

I agree – a truly staggering response rate and congratulations to each and every participant. It’s all testimony to the standing of Chandoo in the international Excel community.

Does anybody know how many of the participants are Chandoo dashboard alumni?

One impression of mine was that in several cases the participants’ dataviz skills were not as advanced as their technical skills. There are some dashboard basics which were quite often not followed in the submissions:
– think very very carefully before using 3D
– choose units and number formats appropriately
– think before using pie-charts
– go for quiet colours
– keep the data-ink ratio to a maximum
– get the dashboard to fit on a standard computer screen (moving target I know)

Another question I asked myself (with hindsight, of course!) was whether the questionnaire could have been structured better. For example, at least three of the job descriptions apply to what I do. And say I work on Excel two hours a day: in my case this doesn’t mean I could increase my income fourfold because I spend the rest of my working time doing different things.

They are all excellent, but I have to say I like Brant Spears the best. Sorry I just had to put it out there…

Saying that I am a complete novice, and might not be looking at it in the way an expert would. These have inspired my to sign up onto your course, as Juanito asked, it would be interesting to know if any of these entries are from the course.

I quickly checked to see how many entries are from my students. – 8 entries.

John Michaloudis, Lubos Pribula, Mohd Mustafa, Nathan Gehman, Nicholas R. Moné, Oscar T, Richard Stebles, Umang Merwana are our students. There may be more, but since we use different payment systems and course websites, it is difficult to track.

What a great response to this contest! There are some amazing Dashboards and I think that everyone is a WINNER here!

My Excel experience spans over 10 years but it wasnt until we installed Excel 2007 at work a couple of years ago (yeah I know, they are way behind!!) that I really started to take interest in Excel. Maybe it was the fact that Excel 2007 was a huge leap from previous versions and more user friendly that I realized that it is a tool to be reckoned with!

I wanted to distinguish myself from my peers at work and Excel was the key. I realised that everyone was using Excel at work but wasnt really good at it or wasnt using Excel to its full potential. So I decided to become AWESOME in Excel!!!. These are the steps I took:

1. I decided to join Chandoo´s classes over a year ago.

2. Look at Dashboards from previous contests, dissect them and apply them in to my current job. This was fun because I was using real life work situations. It took time to dissect and understand some Dashboard formulas but once I got over that hurdle my understanding of new Excel techniques and formulas got much quicker.

3. Spend as much free time using Chandoo´s website as a resource guide for formulas and problem solving for my work templates that I was asked to come up with.

4. Ignore my wife when she´s telling me that I have to go to sleep when I am learning new excel techniques J

During the last 12 months I have evolved from a “beginner/intermediate” level to an “awesomeness” level. I still have to master Macros so there is a huge upside. Now at work people are taking note of my work and are calling me an “Excel Expert”. I let them think that even though I am not in the expert/Chandoo/Hui level just yet.

Most bosses have no clue about excel so if you can stand out in the crowd then you will be promoted very very quickly.

Wow John. What a great testimonial and inspirational story. I am thrilled to hear about your success. I pray that you ascend many more peaks in your work and personal life continuing with this attitude.

Was delighted to take part in the contest and it was my first attempt at it. I have learnt so much from your site and glad to know that the dashboards are out there for any one to rip open and learn more great stuff……Congratulations to the winners and all who took part….hope we can have more contests like this…..and learn more and become more awesome…

Wishes to each of you for bringing out the best… For those who did win… CONGRATULATIONS…. and for those who did not, CONGRATULATIONS….

Seeing all these, it feels, i know nothing, but i look it the other way that i got Lots to learn… (from you guys)

I have learnt many a technique from this site and have used it in my real life work situations – the thermometer chart, the sterring wheel… but still tyring to get into the INTERACTIVE CHARTS… this is one area which if i succeed, will put me in faster mode….